After the fall semester of 2016 came to a close, Ms. Shirley Ellis, one of the two original staff members remaining at the school, retired from MSMS after 28 years of service, and this past week she sat down with me to recount a tale of change, perseverance and dedication.

Ms. Ellis’s first memory of MSMS was being interviewed for an assistant role to Dr. Johnny Franklin, who was the original executive director of the school. “I remember that he said you should always use the golden rule with the people you work with,” Ellis recounted.

After a few slow weeks of work alongside Dr. Franklin, Ellis found herself in a serious transitional period when it was time to move into the newly created Hooper academic building.

Before the renovations to Hooper were finished, Ellis remembers teachers training and scheduling their classes in MUW’s Simmons Hall over the summer before the inaugural school year. By the time August rolled around and it was time to move into the newly acquired Hooper, Ellis was already wondering what she had gotten herself into.

“I was in Hooper for two or three years. I was in an office about half the size of this room and there were two of us in there. If I backed up I would back into the other lady sharing the office with me,” Ellis said with a laugh. “I remember seeing that office and thinking ‘What have I gotten myself into? I don’t believe I am going to stay for more than a year or two.’”

Despite her tight quarters and initial doubts, Ellis stuck around to improve MSMS for almost 30 years before retiring. In those thirty years, she worked alongside each executive director that the school has had, aiding them in whatever they needed help with.

The school’s frequent change in directors could have caused difficulty for Ellis, but she was always willing to assure that she helped each director achieve their personal goals for the school. “Each time we changed directors, they each had a different idea about what they wanted to do with the school,” Ellis stated.

Throughout Ellis’s recollection of her experiences at MSMS to me, I began to realize that Ellis was the oil that kept the machine of MSMS running smoothly throughout troubling times of its past, like the tornado that ripped through campus many years ago.

One of Ellis’s many responsibilities over her 28 years at MSMS was to keep a close eye on the school’s meager budget to assure that MSMS stayed afloat at all costs. One of the most trying times for her would have been the tornado that had the power to shift many buildings on campus, Hooper included, off their foundations. “That was not a good year for me,” said Ellis with a groan when I asked her how the damage from the tornado affected her budgeting, “The book work on that was reeeaaaally hard.”

Despite the tornadoes and tiny offices that Ms. Ellis had to put up with from time to time, she recalled her time spent at MSMS with a sense of pride and fondness. The most fulfilling aspect of being an executive assistant for Ellis was the act of helping those around her. “I like to think that I had a part in the education of our students by being of service and making the teacher’s jobs easier.”  

It is easy to say that after 28 years of incessant work Ms. Shirley Ellis is well deserved of a little vacation time, and Ms. Ellis, you can rest assured that your legacy of kindness and helpfulness will forever live on in the community of MSMS.